New exoplanet found orbiting two suns, largest find yet

A new exoplanet was found orbiting two suns. The discovery marks the largest planet in double-star system discovered to date. Astronomers from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center paired with researchers San Diego State University classified the planet as, Kepler-1647b.

The exoplanet orbits within the sun’s “habitable zone,” where surface, liquid water could exist. But the planet’s size, however, is comparable to Jupiter, signifying that Kepler-1647b could just be a ball of gas and unlikely to support life.

Despite its size, this Tatooine—the desert planet in the Star Wars saga—system resembles many characteristics of our solar system. Measured at 4.4 billion years old, the mysterious celestial body is roughly Earth’s age. And the two suns that the planet orbits are similar to our sun with one smaller and one larger than our host star.

But during a clear night sky, the planet is too dim to see at 3,700 light-years away from Earth. Because it takes 3,700 years for light to reach Kepler-1647b, astronomers are observing the system as it existed over a few thousand Earth years ago.

The Kepler Space Telescope, debuted in 2009, is used to spot planets orbiting around other stars using a “transit” method where astronomers seek flickering bulbs of light indicating a passing planet in front of a star.

Astronomers have identified several of these types of exoplanets, otherwise known as circumbinary planets, in our galaxy. The other dots in our galaxy, however, are smaller than Kepler-1647b, which makes the new exoplanet an easy find—the larger the planet passing by its host star, the more prominent the shuttering light.

Kepler-1647b also has the longest orbit of any transiting exoplanet thus far at 1,107 days (over three years). Since Kepler’s launch, scientists have pinpointed a couple thousand exoplanets in a single region of the Milky Way Galaxy; a few of them are similar to Venus and Earth. The full report was published in TechCrunch.